She drops her backpack and drops on pink beanbag, as she plugs her laptop. It’s about then that Rasha Rasem walks into the office as she recounts her argument with a professor of hers – essentially, she was right, he wasn’t. I somehow managed to get some work done myself. I spent an undeniably relaxed half-day at Bazinga! – it’s difficult to remain completely serious when you’re trying to swim up from a turquoise bean bag – but the managers try to maintain a clear work environment. She plans to launch by the end of the month. In fact, Riham developed her project, EasySakan, during the ‘Intaleq!’ startup competition organized by Bazinga a few months, which was attended by 60 young developers – a resounding success for a new and unknown venture. We also held a startup competition recently”. “Our network is still small though”, says Mourad, “but that will come as the number of members grows. “We do our best to provide the tools developers need – Android phones, X-Box Kinect, Chrome tablets – as well as, when possible, hold regular events and discussions, mentorship opportunities. It’s contagious”.īazinga! aspires to be more than a common physical workspace. A computer science engineering senior I met at Bazinga! – “graduating in two weeks… theoretically”, she says – she comes to Bazinga because “I don’t get much done at home. Whether by design or a side-effect of the team’s youthfulness I cannot tell – but it seems to be working.įor Riham Issam it is working indeed. The overall ambiance of the place is unmistakably collegiate. Mourad Taleeb, a silent and talented web and graphic designer, is in a Bazinga! sweatshirt and his computer is decorated with his own signature comic character, Moodi. Mohammad wears a Google t-shirt, an Android baseball cap – and taps away on his MacBook Pro decorated with a “My other computer is a data center” sticker. I sit with Mohammad and his co-founder Mourad for a long chat. In fact, the venture’s revenue streams are rather meager – membership fees, occasional renting of the space, the cafeteria and a small ‘boutique’, as well as the occasional corporate service still fall short of the needs and expansion needs in terms of space, furnishing – heating and cooling are ever more so necessary in Ramallah’s notoriously badly insulated houses – and “more gadgets”. The café wasn’t manned though – finances not allowing hiring a barista. “And if you want to order something from the café”, says Mohammad as he points to the Android robot with the chef hat by the cafeteria in the corner of the room, “you order it online, and you get an email when your order is ready – we’re trying to keep the noise level to a minimum here”. The rainy afternoon did not allow us to sit on the balcony – on sunnier days, bean bags and extension cords are dragged outside, I’m told. The washrooms are marked with male and female Android robots. The space is dotted with chairs and tables, a couple of dozens of colourful bean bags, with walls hand-painted with large keywords on the wall – “innovation, “mobile”, “ideas”, “solutions”… – as well as logos of social media companies, and a “Physical Facebook Wall” where visitors stick their handwritten posts and comments. “Today at the bank the teller asked me to explain the company’s name – and there was a full queue behind me!”īazinga’s location is a spacey floor of a 4-story building on a quaint street in Ramallah, Palestine’s economic and political nervous centre. “People ask a lot about the name”, tells me acting CEO Mohammad Khatib. The brainchild of five friends, Bazinga! has in a few months established itself as a central address for internet and mobile applications startups, and its founding fathers (and mother) unavoidable figures of the Palestinian tech scene.įans of the “Big Bang Theory” sitcom will immediately recognize the famous catchphrase that gave the company its name, but it’s not clear to everyone. Welcome to Bazinga!, the first Palestinian tech hub, offering a workspace and support to technology and internet entrepreneurs. “We did read the results on Twitter though”. “The Barcelona-Real game? No, we’re not really the football watching type.” Mohammad and Mourad laugh. They say Palestinians are more passionate about the Spanish football league than Spaniards. Most recently he was a speaker at the inaugural TEDxRamallah conference. Mohamed has maintained his blog and Twitter account as anonymous until the end of the January 25th 2011 revolution in Egypt, in which he took part from day one. He has been been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Al-Masry Al-Youm, the Huffington Post, Daily News Hurriyet, among others. This is guest post by Mohamed El Dahshan, an economist and writer who also advises governments and IGOs on entrepreneurship in developing countries, with a focus on post-conflict nations.
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